How to Determine Whether Your PPC Campaigns Are Working?

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How to Determine Whether Your PPC Campaigns Are Working?

3 Answers

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Answer 1

I think the number one factor for determining the success of your PPC campaign is conversion.

The importance of conversion for PPC

Other factors are important too, but let's be realistic, you can be running the slickest and most cost effective PPC campaign in the history of Adwords, but if that traffic you're purchasing is not converting into revenue, or fulfilling some other objective, then it's time to reconsider the keywords you're bidding for, the properties you are displaying on, or the demographic you are targeting.

Syncing up your Google Adwords account with your Google Analytics account is usually the easiest way to track how well your PPC campaign is converting.

Assign goals that represent business value (i.e. A subscription completed, a payment processed, a user sign up...), and this will help you decide whether your money is being well-spent or not.

A big conversion factor to consider is the user experience of your website. Is it easy and clear for users to perform the actions they want to perform?

Are you effectively encouraging users to perform the actions you want them to perform?

Are those two goals balanced in a nicely-designed, trustworthy and secure platform?

And all the rest...

Once you've got your conversion process working nicely, then there's all sorts of things you can do to optimize your PPC campaign.

The main objective is to get away with paying less for each click, while maintaining the same volume and quality of traffic.

How?

Here's some ideas:

Play around with bids and position. Being number 1 isn't always the best. Or position 11 might have a higher CTR than position 3...
Increase CTR, whatever it takes. Ads that get clicks are deemed more relevant. The more relevant your ad, the less you'll theoretically have to pay to display it.
Split test ad copy (Google Adwords has a system for handling that), experiment with alternative keyword targeting, and track everything so that you have the stats to make an informed decision.
Optimize your site. Bounce rate and time on page will help Google judge what kind of experience you are offering users. If they go to your site and never come back, Google will take this as a signal that your ad is highly relevant to this search term or display context, and will be more likely to improve your keyword score.

Answer 2

A PPC campaign, when done right, can be very lucrative
for you and your company. However, a lot of money could potentially be wasted if the campaign is not set up and managed properly.

Below are some ways you can determine whether or not
PPC is working for your business:

Clicks and Impressions

To begin with, your clicks and impressions will be
able to give you an indication whether your campaign is working or not. Budget is going to have some impact on the amount of clicks and impressions your ads can receive, but if you aren’t seeing the levels that you are wanting from your chosen budget, then there might scope for you to add additional keywords and increase traffic levels to your site.

Click
Through Rate (CTR)

It’s important to have a good ratio of clicks to impressions, also known as click through rate (CTR). Google looks at this to determine the quality score of your keywords so it’s crucial that you get this as high as possible.

Whether you decide to choose a display or search campaign, a good CTR will always vary, but you should be aiming for anything over 0.5% for a display campaign and anywhere between 3-5% for a search campaign.

Your Average Position

To get your ads noticed in search results they need to be appearing in the top 3 positions on the page, otherwise they will get lost in a sea of other companies who are all trying to do the same thing.

If your ads have a low CTR then it might be due to your average position, so consider increasing bids where appropriate to give you the best chance of achieving those top page slots. This should see your CTR improve.

Conversion Rate

Businesses who use Google AdWords are after one thing – more customers. So achieving a high conversion rate is crucial to your
success.

Google’s conversion code to track things such as sales
or completions of an on-site enquiry form to relate those conversion back to the keywords and ads to see what is working and what isn’t. Essentially, you should be aiming for as high a conversion rate as possible, because this means that a high percentage of people coming to your website are doing exactly what you want them to do while they are there.

Conversions are often softer than actual sales or leads. What this means is that you could set up a conversion for an email sign up or pull in engagement goals from Analytics to get an understanding of the
quality of the traffic coming via your PPC campaign.

Sales and Leads

At the end of the day getting more sales and leads is
your goal. If you have an ecommerce website and your ads aren’t generating the sales you want, then there’s every chance there is something wrong with your campaigns and/or your site.

Also remember to factor in ROI. If sales are coming in, are there enough to ensure you are getting a return on your investment?

The Bounce Rate

Another metric you can look at to establish the quality of traffic coming from PPC ads is bounce rate. You can do this through either AdWords or Google Analytics.

If the majority of your site’s traffic is bouncing straight of the landing page, then have a think about if your keywords are correct, if your ad conveys the correct message and if the landing page is strong enough for conversion. The good news is if any of the above is incorrect, you can change it. Always remember – digital marketing is an ongoing process that requires constant evaluation.

Average Session Duration

The average duration of a sessions is something else you should be looking at to see how long people are spending on your site when they are getting there via PPC. Is it above or below the overall average?
Does it that the user is interested in the site and engaging with it?

Assisted Conversions

Most products and services are generally shopped around for before a purchase is made or an enquiry is sent, so it’s a good idea to look at assisted conversions in Analytics too. You may discover that lots of
users are coming to your site via your PPC ads and then come back at a later date, through another channel, to convert a sale. If your site is engaging and user friendly enough, users will come back and make their purchase.

Answer 3

From my 10 years experience in PPC Conversion Tracking and proper use of Negative Keywords are most important factors behind the success of PPC Campaigns. As Negative keywords stop irrelevant clicks effective use of Negative Keywords ( Both Broad and Exact matches) alone can make a lot of differences to campaign success.